Crystal River current. [volume] (Crystal, Colo.) 1886-18??, 1887-09-17
Pork Product in Colorado.

Field and Farm.
No one will claim that Colorado can COM
pete with Iowa, Missouri or with any of the
States in the great corn belt, in producing
pork to enter for competition In the mar
kets of the world. We cannot produce corn
enough, nor cheap enough for the competi-
ton. But we can grow swine, and fatten
them for pork cheaper than any State can
afford to send it to US for our own con-
sumption. In fact there is no article we
can produce on our soil tolerably successful
that we can afford to import. Every dollar
sent abroad for earth's products is impover-
ishing. The sooner our producing people
drive this fallacy from their brain that they
can buy what will grow in our soil cheaper
than they can produce it, the sooner will
prosperity dawn upon our country.
Pork has been bringing a good price in
Our western market for several years. Col
orado has been sending abroad two millions
and halt of dollars yearly for the pork
and lard its people consumed. This has
drained one half of the net profit from all
of its mines and manufactures.
The dairy and poultry product has taken
the other half. This, too, when we could
have produced every pound of these things,
saved the money at home, and to-day been
fifty million dollars richer than we are. Ii
is time that the nonsense that an article can
be bought and brought into country from
some other country cheaper than it can be
produced was banished from the human
head. An idle farmer with idle lands can
better afford to grow corn for home con-
sumption and his own use at twenty cents
bushel than to buy it at any price.
There is another idea connected with this
business that is worth consideration by our
people, and that is the quality of the pork
bought in the cholera infected districts and
brought in here, against the sweet, healthy
meat that can be produced at home, where
case OF cholera or other hog distemper
has never been known. Then again,
the best pork, for the human stomach
is not that which has been made
on an entire corn feed. Alfalfa, milk, peas,
barley and rye make more palatable meat
than does corn. Mr.. Hartsel of South
Park has demonstrated that eight bushels
OF rye, steamed and fed to a hog, after he
has been put into the pen to fatten from
the pasture, will make him fat and fine.
This is providing of course, that he has
been properly fed on milk, slop from the
house, and a trifie of grain through the
summer.
When we get to producing our pork at
home, which we surely shall, that article of
meat food will be more popular than it now
is. We all know that the pork that has
been produced in Kansas and Nebraska in
the past few years has not been healthy. 1t
has unquestiOnably been the cause OF sick
ness. 1t has been made of filth and was
diseased The pork grower of those States
has in the past watched his pens and when
hogs developed symptoms of distemper he
has selected them out from among the well
ones and hurried them away to market, and
we in Colorado have been eating them.
This has been on account of the erroneous
idea that got abroad in the early day that
we could buy pork cheaper than we could
produce it.